


Jolt

by Silberias



Series: Sherlolly Parallel Stories - Jolt & Zapped [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Amnesia Recovery, F/M, Past Drug Use, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock is a jerk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 19:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 9,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16414367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: Sherlock knows a few things. His brother is lying, there is someone missing (possibly dead), and that these things are somehow Sherlock's fault. In the background there is also Molly Hooper, who stays.





	1. Prologue

He knew that in the precious two seconds he had as he fell that there was no way to contact Molly to say sorry to her for dying in such a stupid manner. The color of her eyes was even wiped away in the cold realization that there was no surviving the distance he'd fallen. Humans were only built to fall from just a little above their own height. Sherlock shut his eyes just before his body smashed to the flooring below him. There was no heaven where he would meet Molly Hooper ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

He started out with holding her hand. It was warm, and roughly the same hand he'd once held. Sherlock marveled that she'd waited five years for him, staring at her as she dozed against his shoulder. It might have been confusing for someone else, but he could easily overlay his missing decade with her missing half. There had long been the suspicion that Mycroft was hiding something or someone from him, but it was too well hidden—no written documents and faceless lackeys did the trick. He had been too addled from his injury early on to properly gather the evidence that he could have used against his brother to bring Molly back to him.

A fiancée, a woman he'd asked to be his wife for _years_ before she'd finally agreed—disappeared. Though, in an ounce of fairness to Mycroft—Molly _had_ asked, had begged. She had wanted him to be free. Not of her, but of obligation he couldn't remember. She loved him enough to give him that. There was no fault, either, in not wanting to fight with that awful human being he'd been when they first met. That time right after he'd woken from the coma was fuzzy, and always had been, but he must have just been terrible to her. Sherlock had already glanced through the main events, seen that Molly had dropped all of her plans—and that meant job applications, interviews, family trips, finding a flat for them to share somewhere in London—and spent her time religiously at the hospital while his traitor brain had been busily erasing her entirely. Such a poor way to repay her, it twisted his heart.

Molly was hesitant even now, he could tell, that this was somehow an act or that he would relapse and forget her once again. He half wanted to ask, _demand_ , that if he did relapse that she force him to stay with her—have Mycroft force him to stay with her. Molly would ignore it, though, and Mycroft wouldn't push her otherwise. All Sherlock could do was let her curl up to his side in the car for most of the long ride up to Scotland.


	3. Chapter 3

For just one instant, it felt like home when he finally blinked himself awake. The warmth of the body next to him was welcome and relaxing, something he was used to—and then he'd realized that there was no reason for him to be cuddled so nicely, and that there wasn't anyone in particular he even _wanted_ to cuddle with. Once his eyes were open—hospital room, private, Mycroft's doing—he decided to get the person off him in the most efficient way. Being accusatory and defensive weren't the nicest, perhaps, but Sherlock didn't knock things that worked.

Her shock at his behavior was palpable.

Well that did it. He was never, ever, going to try cocaine again. Ending up in hospital with a clingy nurse sleeping at his side, a nurse who claimed she wasn't one despite it being obvious from the careworn look of her sleepy eyes and the gentle firmness of her hands as she handled things. It just wasn't worth it.

Mycroft hadn't helped—telling him not to go running in buildings without backup. Backup for what? He'd asked about the nurse and was rewarded with a roll of the eyes and a scoff.

"That's your fiancée, Sherlock. You're getting married in April you lout. Though she has cared for you through your addictions and your recent injury, she is hardly your nurse." Mycroft looked older as he spoke—as though he'd aged ten years at least since Sherlock had last seen him. It was bizarre—more effects of the cocaine? He didn't recall taking enough to hallucinate, though he kept his face stony in the face of his double-shock. The idea of a fiancée, and how wrong he'd been about the drugs.

His elder brother's expression faded from holier-than-thou to horror over just a few short seconds. No more than two, if Sherlock had been counting.

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Obviously not—you mean that pathetic woman from earlier thinks she's getting _married_ to me?"

Mycroft turned thunderous in his mood then.

"Only because she is the sweetest woman you will ever meet, Sherlock, did she _agree_ to marry you when you proposed just outside of your _rehab clinic_ on the day of your releas—"

"You can't tell me I would ever ask a mouse like that to _marry_ me. Mycroft, she can barely stand up under the weight of her own being, you aren't being serious with me!"

They had _such_ a row after that, and Sherlock's head ached with the effort of shouting—and listening to shouting. He had stubbornly shut his eyes eventually and ignored Mycroft until he left. Behind closed eyelids he reviewed everything he knew about the woman Mycroft insisted he was engaged to. Maybe Mycroft had somehow meant that the woman was engaged to himself rather than Sherlock? Unable to reason properly through his now pounding headache, Sherlock drifted off to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

There was a woman at his side, knitting with a mediocre amount of skill—a recent habit then—and humming softly to herself. Sherlock watched her out of barely opened eyes for a few minutes, baffled when she reached out a hand towards his own as though to take it. Whatever he'd taken at that party he vowed to never take it again—hallucinations were _not_ his favorite. Very much the opposite.

The woman didn't actually touch his hand though, biting her lip and going back to the knitting. Sherlock soon fell back asleep, a dull ache winding its way through his head. He couldn't for the life of him remember why he would be in hospital other than perhaps an overdose of some sort. Drugs were apparently not to be in his repertoire of in-depth experiences if this was where he landed after his first attempt.

Sherlock didn't remember these thoughts, or the woman at his bedside, the next time he woke up. He met Mycroft's eyes instead and felt shame well up through him. One party, one time being recreational with the drugs passed around, and he wound up in hospital. And his head was aching. His elder brother explained to him gently that he'd been there for some time. He'd hit his head while out on a case.

He'd been living with Mycroft's family for the last several years. He had no one in his life except for them. He was a detective—a _consulting_ detective. Mycroft twitched a wry smile at that— _coined it yourself, I do believe._

Sherlock remembered only bits and pieces of this conversation the next time he awoke, and Mycroft was once again at his side. His brother was patient with him as he relayed the information again. And again the next time Sherlock regained consciousness. Mycroft repeated the story until it was stuck in Sherlock's brain and he was able to recall it in detail. The doctors all said that what had been lost was lost unless some sort of shock happened to the brain that caused it to start to remember. One physician had joked that it was as though his brain had deleted the last eight or ten years of his life—Sherlock rather liked that terminology, and made a mental note to keep it with him. There was no need for the detritus he'd lost, he decided, and there was no need to being collecting it again.

Though he was still fuzzy sometimes, he willingly got in the car with Mycroft and went to the little house his brother had feathered for himself in the last decade.


	5. Chapter 5

He'd grown to accept, over the last few weeks, Mycroft's tale as _mostly_ true. There were dots of needle scars along his inner arms and the delicate skin inside his nose was damaged in a manner consistent with prolonged cocaine use. He'd gotten strange looks from his sister-in-law ( _sister-in-law?!_ ) when he asked for coffee, but she'd given it to him readily enough. It was deeply invigorating to sip it, as though he hadn't indulged in a long time. There wasn't a word from either Elaine or Mycroft about it, but Sherlock had a deep suspicion that he'd given up coffee and other stimulants along with the drugs.

Mycroft said that Sherlock had been staying with them for the most part, sometimes spending a night or two at Mummy's. The room looked like something he would have decorated, and it had some clothing and possessions that were obviously his own. But he had never lived in it. The bed was that hard sort of new—meaning it was barely slept in, so he tossed and turned at night trying to break it in properly—the hangers in the closet were new, the glass of the window having the very slightest layer of dust on it meaning the curtains were kept drawn much of the time which was exactly against his habit of leaving shutters, curtains, and windows open as much as possible. The smell on the fabric of his clothing at first wasn't the same as the scented laundry soap that Elaine used, either. At first he thought he'd imagined it—small details like that were hard to remember properly at first, but his brain was steadily recovering from the fall he'd taken and he was just about completely sure about the laundry soap.

In the bag of clothing left for him at the hospital was a green scarf. Handmade, simple with a few lumps—a beginner's effort—but without any special scents or markings to indicate the provenance. He liked it, but it made him feel strange to wear it. Elaine would purse her lips when she saw him wearing it as though she disapproved but when he asked her she would deny anything being the matter.

His brother was covering something up, something big. Almost everyone around him seemed to be waiting for him to remember something of his missing years, but he continued to fail them. Their continued silence, the scarf, and the laundry soap told him everything he thought he needed to know. There had been someone in his life, and his recklessness the night of his injury had cost them their life somehow. Mycroft wanted to remove any guilt that might rest on Sherlock's conscience and covered up the death.

This answer didn't quite sit right with Sherlock but it was the only one he had at the moment.


	6. Chapter 6

He found he was intrigued by the idea of being a detective. Forensic pathology had been a certain form of it, and going out looking for clues other than those provided by the body was just adding a flavorful dash of legwork to the job. Sherlock found he quite enjoyed it. Though he would never admit to this, he was also thankful for Mycroft pulling strings at Barts to get Sherlock access there. He had wanted to work at Barts for as long as he could remember, and it felt like home as soon as he stepped through the doors.

There was also the wickedly intelligent new pathologist, Molly Hooper. She was wonderfully intent on her job and she would smile fondly at the corpses she was in charge of. There was no judgment in her for how they died, no judgment over whatever she found during her autopsies. Whatever conclusions could be drawn about them from her work made her happy. He thought she was rather pretty, as well.

Sherlock found her quite beautiful the first day he met her, but of course he put his foot in his mouth by seeing and saying too much of her life without thinking about it. She had on an engagement ring—on a chain, kept tucked under her blouse—and that mixed with how tired she looked when she thought he wasn't looking at her, well...

"You've lost someone recently. Someone close to you." He tried to word it as tactfully as possible. It wasn't his best, but Sherlock didn't think that it was the worst observation he'd ever voiced. The pathologist, Molly Hooper, looked like she was about to cry for a moment but composed herself enough so that her voice didn't waver too much as she spoke.

"About two months ago, yes. He's gone—um, we, we were going to get married. Not now, obviously." Her voice was tiny and trailing at the end of her sentence and Sherlock thought long and hard about his next move. She was likely still grieving, but maybe going out for coffee once in a while might not be so bad for her. After he'd begun waking up in the hospital having remembered the previous day, Sherlock had felt like there was something missing in his life. It would make Mycroft and Elaine frown to see him moving on, but he needed to. They had removed any means he had of grieving over the person on his own, so the next step was to find someone new.

Something about Molly Hooper was comforting. Maybe it was the fact that he'd spent only a few hours in her lab and already knew where she kept everything, or maybe it was that she seemed eager to be near him despite her obvious sadness.

She was staring at nothing just beyond his shoulder and he realized he'd let the silence lapse longer than most people felt to be normal.

"Well, best not to dwell. He probably wouldn't want you to—Heaven knows that if the situation were reversed he would be moving on by now." There. Sherlock felt a moment of accomplishment on his pronouncement. He acknowledged her loss, he told her hope springs eternal-la-dee-da-dee-da, and in a sense told her to move on _with him_. This was going to work splendidly.

Molly's reaction was quite different than he'd anticipated.

"Get out. Get out now, Sherlock Holmes…"she was pushing him, her hands small but strong on his arm and back. "Out, out, out. You can come back later when Mike's here. Get out get out get out." She'd started shouting and was close to tears by the time she slammed the door to the lab in his face, leaving Sherlock dumbstruck out in the hallway.


	7. Chapter 7

He didn't remember anything but Baker Street, and a woman named Maggie Hudson. She hugged him with surprising familiarity when he knocked on her door— _let me look at you! Oh your hair is just mangled, though I suppose they must have needed to look at your head after—well!_ — but when she pulled away her mouth twisted in the same way Elaine's did. Mycroft was extremely good at finding every loose end and tying it up neatly, and apparently even this woman that Sherlock shouldn't have even remembered had been tidied. He didn't let his disappointment show on his face, though, instead awkwardly asking how they'd met. He hoped that maybe whatever cover story his brother's people had invented might be a little shaky with a woman of Mrs. Hudson's age.

What he got instead was a flat—a quick call to Mycroft soon had a year's lease paid for in advance—and a landlady who treated him like a second son. He filled the flat with his things and then set about looking for a flatmate. He did not want to spend all of his time in the place by himself and seeing as Molly Hooper wasn't quite ready to move on—which was a damn shame but he forced himself to respect boundaries in this oen case—he needed to look elsewhere than Barts. He certainly wasn't going to ask the other pathologist, Stamford, to move in with him.

His flat had come with the stipulation from Mycroft that he turn his mind towards occasional mysteries that his older brother didn't have time to contemplate and solve. He both resented and appreciated this—surely he had supported himself before his accident? Why else had there been the pretense invented that he'd been living with Mycroft and Elaine, and why had their children been sent away to school in such a hurry when the house still bore marks that they'd lived there full time only months ago? Children couldn't quite be trusted to maintain a cover story, and it was best for Mycroft's smoke and mirrors that they not be present at all to present such a weakness.

Sherlock kept his resentment at his brother simmering in the back of his mind. He wanted to know who he had been before he'd fallen, he wanted to move towards being a man in his thirties rather than trapped in with the racing thoughts of a twenty something and the easiest way of doing this would be to force himself to accept the life he'd had. If he knew what he'd lost he might someday grasp the weight of it—but at the moment he had been grabbing at moonbeams for nearly six months. Whatever his life before had been, whatever might be missing from it now that he'd apparently accidentally gotten someone killed—he wanted it. He wanted to look at it like a biography of someone important that he should know things about.

This wasn't possible because of Mycroft's actions, and that made Sherlock irrationally angry.


	8. Chapter 8

Molly Hooper was, awfully enough, the only pathologist who put up with him. Stamford ran—outright _ran_ —at the sight of him most days, and the techs couldn't stand whatever criticisms he muttered at them. Molly however stayed at his side. She still wore the necklace with the engagement ring on it, and the only thing that kept him from asking her out for coffee was the fact that when he flirted with her occasionally she would touch where it lay under her blouse.

Sherlock could admire her loyalty, but it was annoying. He wanted to ask her out, wanted to take her home to Baker Street and have his way with her. But she was living somewhere in the past that he was trying desperately not to pry into. Instead of waiting for her to get over her dead fiancé, Sherlock threw this need to connect with her, this need to have her—this _energy_ into his work. As time went on this became easier and easier but sometimes he dreamed. He dreamed of an anonymous little flat—of course he knew 221B was far too dramatic and overbearing for her tastes which ran towards light blue and yellow for wallpaper and mismatched mugs instead of teacups would be in the cabinets—and Molly would be standing in one of his shirts from uni and her socks.

Her hip would balance on the counter as she sucked on her teeth and watched the sausages or bacon fry up. She would settle into his arms, though, tucking her cheek to rest on his chest while his hands snaked around her waist and from there south. The conviction that he'd led to someone's death—someone _female_ —was proved because he knew how a woman's bare bum felt through an old cotton tee, how her hair and skin smelled. There hadn't been anyone to share lazy mornings like he dreamed of, dreamed with such reality that Sherlock sometimes woke up in a sweat, unless of course they'd been there with him in that misty period of years that he'd lost.

When he woke up, covers thrown to the floor and shirt soaked through, Sherlock would gingerly run his fingertips along the scarring that his hair concealed. He'd cracked his skull in his fall, and it was a miracle according to everyone around him that he hadn't also snapped his neck or his back. The fact that he'd lived rather than died from the swelling on his brain was also wondrous. The cost had been high, though. Lestrade still sometimes looked at him sadly when the man thought Sherlock wasn't watching.

He was better able to repress it as time went by though. Molly was at his elbow, and that was enough at least until she gave up on the man who'd died on her. He didn't know when that would be, but he could wait.


	9. Chapter 9

He was deeply hurt when Molly finally did move on—with someone other than himself. He knew it was childish to assume that he deserved her affection after waiting for her to grieve properly. Well no, he knew it was the behavior of a bastard no one should want to date. But the simple fact that she was using the man to rub it in his face— _I have someone and he isn't you_. That was cruel. If he was supposed to have picked up on some signal from her she should know by now what got his attention and what didn't. He pointedly ignored the feeling that perhaps she had given him some signal, that she'd given him the exact information he thought he needed, that he'd just been in the midst of a case and had glossed over it. It generated a low-level of panic.

So Sherlock was cruel to Jim from IT in a way that only Molly would hear or fully understand. He destroyed Jim "from IT" from the shoes up and voiced his pain that she was happy and that he'd missed it. Although he missed so much more of that confrontation than he should have though. Jim "from IT" Moriarty had been testing him. The man knew far too much about Sherlock to have missed that Molly was Sherlock's only close female acquaintance—he was putting Sherlock's affection for her on trial. After meeting the "consulting criminal," he had been glad of his reaction and his words to the man. If the one person who saw Sherlock's affection for Molly believed themselves to be in error it would protect the woman. Sherlock _still_ didn't know who he'd lost, thanks to Mycroft's meddling, but he refused to lose a second person by bringing them too close to his cases.

Molly wouldn't speak to him for weeks but she'd picked up on his jealousy. She continued using his affections against him—flirting in the hallways and starting to have lunch dates with what appeared to be every MD in the building. Sherlock was confused and frustrated with her but managed to ignore it for a few more months. They needed to live their own lives, and he needed to stop hoping. Hoping to figure out how to ask her out himself, hoping that she didn't get attached to someone else in the meantime. It was like shaking up baking soda and vinegar for Sherlock. In fact, he managed to keep it all bottled up—and some of _it_ being the fact that after months and months he couldn't seem to summon the right words to speak to her of inane things like feelings. His feelings. It was an inability which infuriated him—until Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve it turned from anger to horror and it was all his fault.


	10. Chapter 10

It had been a horrible day that led up to that horrible night when he ruined it all.

He'd woken up from a nightmare—The Woman, Irene Adler, had him bound up tight quite against his will and was photographing him. He'd disliked photographs up until that horrid hat photo had been adopted by the press as his signature look and now he despised them entirely. He had tried to steer the dream away to the pleasant mornings he spent in the crampt little flat he'd never seen before. He'd tried to go to Molly but The Woman followed him there and had wrapped herself around him as Molly turned from the stove to face him. Her little mouth pinched in hurt and tears rolled down her cheeks as he felt The Woman's hot breath in his ear saying evil nothings that set his teeth on edge. Sherlock hoped that he hadn't yelled himself awake, but he feared he might have. His flatmate had given him funny looks all morning.

Said flatmate had then dragged him around town doing last minute shopping. They were having a party—John claimed he'd informed him of this but Sherlock quite failed to recall the conversation—and it was customary to have some small gifts for all the guests. For an early Christmas, John said with a jaunty little smile. Ah. New girlfriend then. He made a mental note to ask John just how he did it—how a short, if still quite fit, man with graying hair, a terrible home-life, and a touch of hardly-treated PTSD managed to attract far more than his share of women. Perhaps first he would work on some better words for that question, John would frown at the current litany.

Mrs. Hudson had had John's help, early that afternoon, with manhandling him into an antler hat so as to pose with her for her Christmas photos. Her children hadn't come home for Christmas with their own mother and so he and John played her surrogates. They'd had to redo the picture several times—one of them would blink, Sherlock wouldn't be smiling satisfactorily, Mrs. Hudson worried the colors were off, and several other excuses. A dozen or so photographs, this time these ones being real and that much more loathsome. What was everyone's obsession with putting him in hats?! It had thankfully ended soon enough once he'd _actually_ cooperated—and when they had a good copy, Mrs. Hudson slipped away to hide her camera and start the tea. Sherlock whipped the hat off nearly as soon as her back was turned and then he'd taken it to her small garden and buried it under the snow. Hopefully the elderly woman wouldn't find it until the spring rain had thoroughly ruined the thing.

He would like that. Deeply.

Especially since Mrs. Hudson and John forced him to help them decorate the flat after he refused to have any tea with them. The fairy lights were a nice touch, and the fire in the hearth was pleasant and they eventually let him fiddle with his violin in the corner rather than interact. He needed it. The day was too much and he was sure that he would have nightmares tonight as he had last night. The Woman upset his mind too much and made him crave something that would either keep him awake—his veins whispered _cocaine_ at him on this train of thought—or put him into plain unconsciousness. Just because he didn't consciously remember his drug use didn't mean his body chemistry had forgotten it. He would probably have to smoke for the rest of his life just for the fact that his body and brain liked nicotine a hair more than they did cocaine—he would always be an addict to something.


	11. Chapter 11

Sherlock focused on playing people's requests as Lestrade arrived followed by John's girlfriend. He smiled as pleasantly as he could but when the guests settled in over drinks he started to itch for silence and solitude. It was three quarters of the way down this slide in his mental patience for the party that Molly Hooper arrived. His breath caught for only a moment—she was lovely. If he was any other man he would have stared at her long and hard before everything clicked into place, but he was Sherlock Holmes. He could see more with a careless glance than most could only see with singularly focused study.

It was Christmas and she barely knew most of the people here—she was just stopping by for a drink and to drop off presents before going on to whatever celebration she'd been invited to by someone she wanted to impress. Sherlock could see of no other reason she would wear such an outfit and seem so flustered—so uncomfortable and ready to leave while wearing an outfit that left every man in the room devastated. If he'd felt welcome at her home he would have been acting the exact same way while wearing his favorite get-up—eager to show himself and his affection off. In that case, though, he would be eager not to leave himself but for everyone to find another flat to spend Christmas Eve.

The nice thing about being himself is that he could be a jerk—could be _mean_ —under the guise of deducing things. He could claim the inability to turn off his gift and people wouldn't usually slap him for his words. And if they did he could deal with a slap to the face much easier than he could a face-full of wine. With this in mind, Sherlock set about shredding Molly's intentions—using her best wrapped gift as his evidence as his hurt poured into his words. It went splendidly and he was feeling quite refreshed on having vented his frustration at Molly and her unknown beau when he actually read the card attached to the small package. If he'd had anything to eat or drink that day, Sherlock would have had to choke back vomit. As it stood he had a good bit of trouble resisting the urge to retch.

That wasn't the worst of it, either.

Because Molly was standing up for herself and speaking into words his horrid behavior to her. To everyone. Sherlock had never wanted to take words back more than he had during that long pause before he apologized to her. He had to apologize to her, because if she did care for him as he'd deduced she cared for the receiver of the box in his hands then things had to be right. He had to make it better—and he was going to, right up until The Woman made this evening go from terrible to nightmarish in seconds.

Strangely enough, he realized when he got the call from his brother that The Woman's body had been found, he was glad.

He was glad she was dead, because then she might stop invading everything that kept him sane. His work, his phone, his _dreams_. She would never have the chance to ruin Molly Hooper. At least, she would never have the chance to ruin Molly more than he already had.


	12. Chapter 12

If he believed for one second (and he had believed for much, much longer than one second, really) that Irene Adler wouldn't have the chance to ruin Molly more than _he_ had already he had another thing coming. Quite another thing entirely. The mobile in the box told that story well enough, he realized in the days following that night.

Molly didn't have any other family, and had prettied herself up for John's party because it was the only thing she was looking forward to. She had stayed for a little while after he'd shut himself in his room—he had heard her hesitant laughter, like it wasn't alright for her to have fun after being humiliated in such a way. She had gone home when Mrs. Hudson had suggested they take a group photo, and must have gotten the call to head to Barts shortly after she'd arrived home and gotten ready for bed.

When she had been there, just meters away, Sherlock hadn't known anything to say to her, any way to fully show his remorse over his behavior. He had stayed—had _hidden_ —in his room for the duration of the party. John had made some excuse that a promising case had fallen through, and _don't we all know how Sherlock gets about his cases._ There was laughter after that and the sound of a clinking glass as someone congratulated him for his wit.

Oh it was all very witty, Sherlock decided as he realized that Molly was the only person Barts could have _possibly_ called in on such late notice on such a night. It was all very witty to someone _not_ himself, and when he found said _someone_ he wasn't at all sure he wouldn't strangle them. It certainly wasn't Irene Adler, however, because she was thoroughly dead.

As were his hopes of being able to say he'd waited for Molly to grieve her dead lover and hadn't pursued anyone in the interim. Even he knew how this looked and he couldn't stand it. Instead, Sherlock turned on his heel after identifying Irene and stalked out of Molly's mortuary. She wasn't exactly the crying type, but he didn't want to stick around and see if the dead woman under the sheet was this evening's tipping point for her.

For the next _year_ Irene kept interfering in his life, and Molly kept being around to see it somehow. He told himself to give it up, to just _work_ rather than try and explain himself. Molly seemed to be moving on and seeing people and it was time he did the same. To distract himself, Sherlock decided to try in actual earnest to quit smoking, and avoid Molly's morgue.


	13. Chapter 13

Sherlock of course couldn't remember if he'd had hallucinations while he'd been a slave to a drug addiction. Most days he was glad of it, except for the fact that it meant he'd never hallucinated something patently supernatural before, and therefore had no coping mechanisms. He dreamed sometimes, of course, and sometimes he had nightmares, but nothing that his brain threw at him happened while he was awake. That had perhaps made the imaginary hound all the more shocking, really. Perhaps it was this reality of seeing things that weren't real that triggered his regular dreams to turn bizarre, perhaps it was a latent side effect of the HOUND project's gas—but his dreams while he was in Devon were terrifyingly real. So much more real, in details from the texture of fabric to the warmth of skin, than seeing the gigantic hound that Henry Knight had described to him. His dreams were worse than seeing Jim Moriarty under the gasmask, worse than the leering, demon-toothed grin the apparition had worn.

He had legitimately avoided sleeping, hoping to escape his nightmares.

He dreamed of Molly—but not his Molly. This Molly was younger, got less sleep if the bags under her eyes meant anything, and she loved him. He went to sleep on the floor of the room their second night there—John was being childish about the bed—and woke up with his head in Molly's lap. The fingers of one hand were twined with his, resting above his heart, while her other hand stroked his forehead. Her smile was hesitant as he met her eyes.

"You came back then, silly man?" her lips sobered into a brief frown, "You missed Dr. Abernathy's lecture. It was all about decomposition of ligament. It was actually quite funny, he had a cadaver arm—oh, that made the diener all out of sorts by the way—and just," she made a stilted flop of her arm, nearly disengaging their fingers with the move, "gestured with it as he shouted questions. I have the notes, if you want to look over them."

"Just my sort of—I'm sorry I missed it, Molly." She mumbled something along the lines of "'sokay, Sherlock," as she looked away and squeezed his hand. The words, words he never remembered speaking, tumbled out of him then as he reached up to touch her cheek with his free hand. She leaned into his touch but didn't look back at him.

"It isn't a problem, just a little experiment. Lost track of time, really. It's like floating—and my mind just slows down. I can think of one thing at a time without feeling rushed and—Molly, I'm sorry. It won't happen again." Sherlock remembered, once he'd woken, that her smile at that had been like her smiles since Irene Adler had ruined his chances with her. Like she didn't quite believe him. Her eyes not quite meeting his, her smile not revealing her teeth, using only the corners of her mouth to smile without actually stretching the skin of her lips. It was very rare these days that Molly actually smiled at him—in fact he remembered the last time. He had still been tangled up with Irene Adler and he'd been the one to chase that smile away with his focus on the case rather than the woman beside him.

Though there had been no actual fear in the first dream, nothing terrifying, nothing jumping out of the dark at him, Sherlock could only classify it as a nightmare. He didn't want to dream of Molly holding him so sweetly but smiling at him like he was lying. Out of all the people he'd met or re-met after his accident, at least Molly felt genuine. Like she hadn't been told by Mycroft what to say and how to act around him. John reminded him a lot of Molly. It was, Sherlock liked to think, why he was friends with the man at all.


	14. Chapter 14

There was another dream though on a different night, equally unsettling in the feeling of reality and content as the first. It was dark and close around him, a chair and a blanket under his body, and there was light under the door in front of him. Two small shadows—feet—nearby that gathered into a larger shadow as someone sat down in front of the door. Sherlock dove forward and scrabbled for the door handle, swearing when it didn't budge—swearing evolving into sentences, some of which he knew were lies borne out of desperation to be free. _Molly let me out, damn it woman, let me out. Let me out this instant! Whatever I said to you before, ignore it. I was high—you know I don't remember the things I say when I'm like that. Let me out!_

And then a woman crying. He'd never heard Molly cry except for this one dream, but he could feel the door rattling just a little as she sobbed, obviously leaning against it. Despite his continued shouting she didn't budge, and the door remained shut. He tried to calm down and get his voice to a more reasonable level, to logic his way out of his predicament. But Sherlock's brain was anything but calm and focused—he'd never felt his thoughts race at this speed except for his best attempts at quitting smoking. There was no way for him to focus clearly, not even on his desire to get out of the broom closet.

His eyes gradually adjusted to the light given them, seeing a second chair—twisted and broken—and a small dresser. Lost inside his racing thoughts, Sherlock pawed through every drawer seeking _something_ to slow down his mind. Molly continued to weep outside of the door and it shredded him inside to listen to it. Anything but that—so he started yelling again, not at her but lists. The periodic table's first iteration, and then adding in elements in the order of their discoveries. How many Chinese restaurants were within walking distance of his favorite tube station to Bart's. Sherlock paced like a caged lion, shivering and shaking all the while.

This dream didn't wake him up, though, it was the dream of falling that did it. It morphed slowly from the closet, with the light and shadows peeking from under the door to breaking floorboards under his feet. The echoes of Greg Lestrade yelling after him as his body rushed towards the floor—his heart seizing as adrenaline flooded his system and making time slow to a crawl. He watched in horror as the dresser and chair melted and twisted into the shards of wood planks falling with him from the weak spot on the floor above, the weak spot he'd just plunged through—the weak spot that as he stared at it felt like the last warm place in the world, the last specks of light making their way around Molly's sobbing form.

Just as he was about to hit the ground Sherlock wrenched himself awake with a start. His heart was still pounding, the muscles in his chest cramping and hurting from the intensity. The adrenaline that was leaving shivering and sweat in its wake helped him though. For the first time it occurred to Sherlock that he was witnessing memories.

He nearly was sick right there on the floor of the room, only barely making it to the loo to retch his guts out.


	15. Chapter 15

He was glad of the long drive and then the longer ride on the train after to get home. Sherlock had waited years and years for answers which he'd been unable to suss out. He'd been far too confused early on with his jarred brain to properly investigate when the trail was fresh, to figure out who had been lost. What had been taken from him, and those around him. Everyone frowned or looked away or clammed up in some way when he'd tried to follow the clues when he was in a fit mental state to do so.

It had been a slow-simmering fury over years, and now it had reached a full boil.

There was a flood of mixed emotions that he was glad John snored through. The doctor had been through hell, he deserved his sleep. Sherlock on the other hand deserved the relative quiet. It had been a deep seated suspicion for years that his actions in that unremembered warehouse had led to someone's death. Occasionally he'd entertained the grim thought that Molly wouldn't ever like him because perhaps he'd been best mates with her dead fiancé—the man who hadn't survived the fall as he had. A sicker thought had been that he'd fallen on top of said man, ensuring his death while saving Sherlock's own life.

The truth was much more awful than that, though, and it brought bile up his throat if he wasn't careful when he turned his full attention to the facts.

He was the dead man. He was Molly's dead lover—and he'd been so deferent and standoffish with Molly to spare her feelings for _years_. Stupid. Stupid, _stupid_. The answer was staring him right in the face. Everything about Molly had been as familiar as knowing how to use a skullsaw despite remembering exactly nothing about how he'd learned to use it. Molly Hooper was obviously from the same hazy place he'd learned what he knew instinctively of pathology and it had slipped right over his head. At first it was because his brain was recovering. After that it was just laziness in observing the world around him.

It hurt.

It _hurt_.

She was so good to him, and he just hurt her so much in return. In the weeks after returning from Baskerville, Sherlock had been unable to face her as more and more of his memory came back to him. He tried to force his mind away from his past, throwing himself into cases and trying his damnedest to avoid the morgue, to avoid Bart's. And then Jim Moriarty had made himself known once again. Mycroft had let him go— _to see what he can conjure up this time for you, Sherlock_ —and now he was making his moves. It was an interesting case, to be sure, and it would have been utterly terrifying if the madman had known Sherlock's thoughts in regard to Molly.


	16. Chapter 16

Molly's soft words about her father brought a fresh wave of terrible feelings to Sherlock. He knew that her father had died while they'd been dating, but now he remembered that he'd kept his head above water with his addiction just long enough to get Molly through the worst of her grief. He hadn't ever thanked her enough, at the time or even afterwards, for staying with him through her own troubles. It felt like someone had punched him in the kidney when she softly said to him, _I don't count_.

Half of Sherlock's brain was still twisting around the case, and he hadn't focused on her completely up until that instant. Molly stayed with him, near him at least, despite believing that she meant nothing to him. He found, watching her leave—hearing her remember how much he hated crisps by not getting him any—that he'd done nothing to promote her trust in her value. It was perhaps why Moriarty was leaving her out of his schemes.

Later on in the evening, after running through London and ambushing Kitty Reilly in her flat, he'd stared his demon in the face.

They'd smiled at each other, wicked and knowing while Kitty and John tussled to keep them apart, for a scant moment. Each believing they had the upper hand against the other. Except Jim thought that Sherlock had been dealt one fewer cards to play with. Once, Sherlock had thought Jim Moriarty was testing Sherlock's feelings for Molly, the one woman his own age he was close to. That theory was incorrect though: the other man had used Molly Hooper to test Sherlock's _memory_ —and because he had avoided her once he'd remembered, Jim's theory that she meant nothing to the detective stood firm. It was a sick sort of villainy to do to the woman, while also ensuring that even people who _cared_ about Sherlock Holmes despite his apathy towards them would be hurt by his death—Moriarty planned to kill the man she obviously still loved at her place of work, in a manner which could only bring back memories of how she'd lost him in the first place.

It was just the sort of mistake that someone like Jim Moriarty would make. A plan based on a few faulty readings of tests and gut assumptions rather than scientific deductions. It was the tiniest of advantages, but there was a reason races were won by photo-finishes. All he needed was an inch and he could stretch it into a mile.

Jim would of course pick a day that Molly would be working. He would pick a place where she would find out immediately. And he would pick something horrific, to traumatize her beyond any measure of recovery. Jim Moriarty wanted Sherlock to jump from Barts, and he wanted Molly Hooper to see his dead body after he did it. This was the upper hand that his enemy believed himself to have. But Sherlock had Molly Hooper, who no one thought he would stop to count.


	17. Chapter 17

He took all of the least travelled hallways in Barts to get to Molly's preferred lab and took five minutes opening the door so that he didn't make a sound. It was chilly inside, so he stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited for her—watching her bustle around putting glassware in the autoclave, straightening his mad-dash notes left from earlier in the day, gathering her own belongings. He had promised her that he wouldn't hurt her again, and she had promised to stay with him forever. Remembering the stark little room he'd recovered in after his fall, remembering the kind of man he'd woken up as, Sherlock didn't blame her for choosing another path to fulfilling that promise.

Because she had fulfilled it, even while he dragged his own promise through the mud.

Molly had been at his elbow whenever he needed her to be. Her notes were easy to read and understand, and she usually had a second copy typed up for him if it was for a case—so he could take the notes with him. She hadn't even slapped him the numerous times he'd gone into a jealous fit after perceiving she was moving on and not with him. He knew she never would, not after finding a memory of their first Christmas together after he'd gotten clean—the dress he'd bought her (with gaudy earrings to match) was still in her possession. Surely something from such a happy evening would've caused her to get rid of it if she wasn't waiting for him.

There were a myriad of minor details like this surrounding her that made up Sherlock's mind. She still cared for him, she was still loyal to him, she would probably lock him in a closet still if he asked her. After all, Molly had gotten him coffee all these years and looked hopeful and expectant when he took a sip—how had he never processed let alone examined how her face fell when his own twisted at the bitterness of the drink? She had been omitting the salt on purpose, hoping he would eventually remember how he liked it, and perhaps remember that he liked _her_.

He waited until she was about to leave the lab, after the lights were off, to speak.

"You were wrong you know."


	18. Chapter 18

He watched Molly jump but not scream, recognizing his voice instantly. His returning memories told him he loved her, but despite how much he wanted to indulge them he knew that he would have to start over—he cared deeply for her, he had wanted to act on his feelings for her for years, but _love_ was a memory. A good one, one he wouldn't mind updating, but he had to be honest with himself or he would end up hurting both of them _again_.

So he started with something recent, ease her into the knowledge that he had finally remembered her. It would be a bit of a shock, probably, and he didn't want her to burst out sobbing or anything.

"You do count, you've always counted. And I've always trusted you," he let her absorb that for a moment, willing her to understand him and take his words to heart, "but you were right. I'm not okay." Honestly he was terrified, because if Molly didn't help him he would only be able to save her. Not John, not Lestrade, Not Mrs. Hudson. Mycroft would be able to spirit her away without incident or alerting Moriarty—but that plan wouldn't work for the others. He needed Molly, probably more than he ever had before.

"Tell me what's wrong," her voice was controlled, commanding. The same tone she used when he'd been high and acting strangely. The voice that still cared about him but needed him to focus. Relief flooded him as he heard the not-familiar-familiar tone. It was the perfect way to let her know he'd finally pulled his brain back together. She would know what he meant.

"Molly, I think I'm going to die." _Don't let me out, Molly, no matter what I say. You can call Mycroft even, if it means that I stay in this flat. Please, I'm not sure I'll make it home if I get out._ His terrible attempts at getting clean without help, the horrible things he'd said to her while his body howled for the cocaine he was denying it. The darkened hall closet in their flat at Gower Street, Molly locking him inside and propping a chair under the door handle or just sinking down to cry in front of the door.

The dozens of rejected marriage proposals.

"What do you need?" He wondered if she knew that that was what she'd said the first night he'd had her lock him up. Sherlock (now) remembered it in perfect clarity. He would have to ask her later, for now he needed her help and he needed her to still believe in him.

"If I wasn't everything you think I am, everything that _I_ think I am, would you still want to help me?" Sherlock dearly hoped, as he slowly stepped closer to Molly until he was just a few feet from her, that he'd not read her wrong. He had years of data of how she acted toward him after the accident but data was sometimes wrong. Sometimes data couldn't take into account random accidents.

"What do you need?"

" _You_."


	19. Chapter 19

As much as he wanted to lose himself in her, holding her, maybe tilting her head up and kissing her senseless—the dusty memories of their lives together gleamed enticingly enough—Sherlock pulled himself into focus to explain the plan. He'd called his brother in on this, and the arrangements for his jump were being made. He just needed Molly to carry out his check-in at the morgue and keep her head on straight. Sherlock was glad that he was relying on Molly for this most crucial point of his plan. He had trusted her implicitly for years before he remembered—and he trusted her even more now.

John would be shocked from the phone call, from the jump, and from whatever disorienting drug Mycroft would arrange for his friend to breathe in from the moment he stepped into Mrs. Hudson's hallway—the only sure way of administering it, he said offhandedly to Molly as he wrote out in their shorthand his list of instructions—but the people who would take Sherlock's body to the mortuary wouldn't be drugged.

Now he had to get to her acting—hopefully she would be as good tomorrow as she'd been with him for years.

"Did you cry? After the accident?" He'd been bent over her desk, Molly standing at his elbow but now he straightened up and turned to face her, pulling her to him in a motion he almost felt like he remembered. Molly gave him a flickering smile before her gaze dropped to his chest, her hand coming up to rub his side as a comforting stalling gesture.

"Yes. Sometimes when I was with you in the hospital, never around anyone else if I could help it. People kept trying to make me do it, it felt like." She wouldn't look at him, picking at invisible pills in the fabric of his shirt. Sherlock bent and kissed the top of her head, rubbing his nose at her hairline as he spoke. His lips barely brushed her forehead.

"Would you cry if you saw me like that again?"

The silence was choking, but he had all night if he really needed it, and it was probably under a minute all told. Molly tucked her head under his chin, her breath feathering against his throat as she finally answered him.

"I think it would kill me."

"And if it were a ruse that you were in on?"

"I think it would be worse," her voice was scratchy with emotion, and Sherlock almost flinched when a tear dripped on his shirt and soaked through to the skin. His other arm rose up and wrapped around her tightly, her sobs muffled into his chest. He closed his eyes and held her, wishing there was anything other than this that he could do.

"I'm going to take you with me after this, though, Molly. Please, keep your tears for later. Please, I dream enough about you crying while you save me. Please," his voice was a whisper as he begged her, just barely audible in her small office.


	20. Chapter 20

Though the voice screaming his name was once again a friend—Gregory Lestrade had been his friend before his first accident, his first fall, he knew now—all Sherlock could think of as he fell was Molly Hooper. The woman he'd loved superimposed over the woman he knew and wanted, the woman he knew clouding his visions of the woman he'd forgotten. At the last second the lorry had jumped the curb and he'd landed on the washing being delivered to the hospital. The cloth beneath him was hard—he could barely breathe from how hard he'd hit, and his nose was bleeding, likely broken—but Sherlock rolled off the back, biting into the capsule Mycroft had given him. A paralytic drug used to mimic coma or even death, he had seconds to throw himself on the pavement before he lost consciousness.

Molly would do the intake and she would do beautifully, he told himself as someone punctured a bag of blood onto his forehead—the excess seeping across the damp concrete below him. By the time John saw him as his body was turned over, Sherlock was unconscious and limp as a corpse.

When he blinked awake several hours later he was in bed, a warm body curled up next to him—his right hand wrapped up between two smaller ones—and for a terrible moment Sherlock wondered if he was dreaming. His eyes quickly focused, though, and his Molly—with her quiet smile and the barest lines of age beginning to show on her face—stared back at him. She worried at her lip when she realized that he was finally awake—Mycroft had offhandedly mentioned something about the drug might paralyze his eyes open, or some other small terror—and Sherlock reached to stroke her cheek, his body stiff from the pounding he'd put it through in the last several days.

"Your brother said I could stay with you," she said quietly, cuddling closer to him after she realized that he'd woken up as himself. Sherlock wondered if, when he'd been in hospital after the accident at the warehouse, she'd ever curled up next to him like this. It was more than pleasant, he half decided and half remembered.

"I don't give a damn about what he said," she stiffened instantly as he spoke, "though I think I might have pitched a fit if I'd woken up without you near, Molly." Sherlock felt he'd said the right thing, because Molly relaxed enough to let go of his hand so he could try to flop onto his back. His muscles felt jittery and weak and he hated it, but here with Mycroft's people in Mycroft's safehouse it was the best place to not be at his best. Molly threaded their fingers together, humming softly and closing her eyes. Sherlock watched the slight movements below her lids.

"Molly?"

"Yes?" she mumbled, snuggled up to him with eyes still shut.

"Marry me? Someday?"

"You needn't keep asking, Sherlock, when I said yes I meant it."


End file.
